Oblivion (2013)

"Oblivion" was described to me as a film it was probably best to go into with exceedingly low expectations. I didn't hear anyone classify it as particularly bad, so to speak, but the general consensus was that it was of a distinctly middling quality. Although I'm assuming a good number of those lukewarm opinions were most likely tainted by the fact that the film is a Tom Cruise vehicle, which I'd estimate alienates roughly half the general population right there. If there is one actor more polarizing than Nicolas Cage, it's Tom Cruise. People are all about not liking Tom Cruise just because. They seldom have a good reason. They just don't like him. Fair enough, I guess.

Since I don't have a particular problem with Tom Cruise and am of the opinion that he's an alright actor most of the time, "Oblivion" seemed an attractive sci-fi outing to spend an afternoon watching. And while it's difficult to imagine anyone ever watching it twice or even owning it just because, I did get a decent two hours of entertainment out of it. But man am I glad I waited to rent it. Had I spent $9 to see it in theaters I would have been slightly annoyed.

That's some war face you got there, Tom. It's the same look I get when I scratch the cue-ball.

"Oblivion" begins with a tepidly read bit of exposition by Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), a repairman who is one of the last people left on Earth in the aftermath of an alien war which we won, but ended up devastating the planet. His task is to maintain the drones that protect these giant machines which provide the power to send humanity to Saturn's moon, Titan, which is their new home since Earth is an irradiated wasteland now. The remnants of the invading alien forces are still around and attack the machines all the time, so there needs to be constant surveillance so that humanity can reach Titan and survive.

At least, that's what Jack's been told. It comes as no surprise, given the genre and broad stroke non-description of the talking head authority figure, Sally (Melissa Leo), that there's going to be a twist at some point which will "challenge everything he knows" and all that good stuff. In addition, the amount of obvious obfuscation going on regarding anything outside of Jack and his partner Victoria's (Andrea Riseborough) little bubble on top of their giant tower practically screams out that at some point we're going to find out left is right, up is down, good is bad and any other kind of tropes which would be fine had they not been done thousands of times before.

"What would you say, Mr. Cruise, if I told you that everything you knew was a lie?"

"I'd say I was a government official in a post-apocalyptic setting."

Shock of all shocks, that's exactly what happens. From a plot standpoint, this is one of the most cliched, uninspired, saw-it-coming-15-seconds-in films I've seen in quite some time. If you've seen any amount of science fiction films in your life, "Oblivion" will be like an odd mix-and-match of around a half dozen of them. There is absolutely nothing about it which warrants any kind of praise when it comes to originality.

That being said, there are movies that do cliched well, and movies that do cliched poorly. And you know what? "Oblivion" did it well. It did it damn well, in fact. The story is going to throw you for about as many loops as are in a bowl of Count Chocula, but it takes real skill to make a film that is very familiar like this not boring. And I must admit to finding "Oblivion" surprisingly entertaining considering how much I felt like a psychic while watching it.

This is an absolutely gorgeous film, which isn't surprising considering that it's directed by Joseph Kosinski, who made the world's most beautiful two-hour long Daft Punk music video with "Tron: Legacy." This time he's dealing with a more realistic looking setting, so in that respect I actually think "Oblivion" looks better than "Tron: Legacy." It's a better movie, too, but that's not that difficult of a feat to pull off. I especially liked the subtlety of the CGI, with the huge machines in the sky barely poking through the distant haze almost like an afterthought being one of the more effective and economic ways of keeping the viewer grounded in the setting I've seen in some time. I'm not going to say that alone makes "Oblivion" worth the sit, but that's one more factor in keeping you entertained and distracting you when they rip off "Moon" and the end of "Independence Day."

Did I mention it's pretty?

As far as acting goes, to be honest this isn't one of Tom Cruise's better efforts. He has moments when he's alright but generally speaking he's kind of bland and sleepwalks through it. The same goes for Olga Kurylenko playing his main love interest. This is more a fault of the writing, since they really don't have any chemistry together at all besides the fact that the script tells us they do. It's pretty bad. On the other hand Andrea Riseborough was actually pretty damn good and gives what is by far the most believable performance of the movie.

The biggest fault with the casting was not Cruise's blandness nor the fact that Morgen Freeman is in it for all of 15 minutes total, but that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Zoë Bell are given meaningless and do-nothing roles. And it's especially irritating to see the day saved by I'm-not-too-into-it Tom Cruise when The Bride's stunt-double and Jamie freaking Lannister are in the next room polishing their guns and just waiting to kick some ass.

"Sir. Seriously. Two swords. Give us two swords. We will end this in like an hour."

All that being said, "Oblivion" is fine. It's just fine. The end product is better than it looked in the trailer, but it's pretty safe and familiar sci-fi. It may be a product of many different parts from many other films, and it may not be bigger than the sum of those parts, but trust me when I say it could have gone down a lot worse. At least this is competent film making.

Check out the trailer!

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Oblivion" isn't going to win awards for originality, but it's a well made, familiar sci-fi movie that looks very pretty and does what it does well. If you're okay with Tom Cruise this is worth a watch. Just keep your expectations somewhat tempered and you'll be fine.

Riddick (2013)

One of my favorite movies ever is "Pitch Black." And I'm in the very small minority who didn't hate "The Chronicles of Riddick," despite it being a measurable step down. But then again, there are few places to go from greatness other than downwards. For the third installment, "Riddick," all I wanted was a fun, dumb, gory B-movie. I wanted it to get back to basics. I don't think that's too much to ask.

What did I get? Well, it certainly is a B-movie. It's certainly gory. It's got some elements of fun in it, for sure. It's stripped down and back to a very simple survival story. And it is most definitely, without question, really dumb.

But on the other hand, it does have a very sexy voice.

So why do I feel so empty afterwards? Why am I so disappointed in it? I'm not totally sure, but I think in the end my problem with "Riddick" is that the 'dumb' outweighed nearly everything else that was positive about it. This is a dumb movie with dumb, unlikable characters and a plot that's not exactly terrible but not exactly worth caring about. At least it's that way for the first two acts. When the third act comes along all of a sudden we get dumped into "Pitch Black" again out of nowhere, which would usually be a good thing, but here it's so jarring that it's really unwelcome. But more on that later.

"Riddick" is a direct sequel to "The Chronicles of Riddick," which I honestly found somewhat surprising, which finds our titular anti-hero (Vin Diesel) stranded on a backwater piece of nowhere which isn't the same planet from "Pitch Black" even though it looks just like it. What happened is both he and the Necromongers had had enough of each other pretty early in his tenure as ruler, so Karl Urban gets his little 40 second cameo and screws him over, foolishly thinking that a fall of a couple hundred feet and a cliff landing on him is enough to kill Richard B. Riddick.

Please. Riddick will do that and still choke a buzzard right afterwards. He doesn't even care.

After acclimating himself to the dangerous environment he's found himself in, we go through a montage of what must be a year or so as he survives on this rock. Coming across a mercenary station, he sends out a signal broadcasting his location, which sends a bunch of bounty hunters after him. While that would normally be a bad idea, he's intending to use these guys as a kind of taxi service to get him off the planet. And if they don't want to leave him a ship willingly, well he IS Riddick, so Plan B is simply for him to kill them all.

That's a big chunk of the movie, which consists of Riddick making complete chumps out of all the dumb mercenaries that are too stupid to understand that they are hopelessly outclassed or to attempt any kind of basic safety procedures like "Don't split the party." And while it was cool in "Pitch Black" to see him be a supreme bad-ass like that, by the time the third movie rolls around we know all this already. And frankly I have no idea why Riddick, who is capable of such absurd feats of invisibility and stealth so as to be under suspicion of being a wizard, doesn't just sneak on one of the ships, steal it, and leave. I guess then we wouldn't have the pleasure of dealing with the jackasses who make up the mercenaries/fresh meat.

Like this piece of septic run-off.

Jordi Mollà plays Santana, the weaselly leader of the first band of mercs, and he is without question one of the most insufferable characters I've seen in any film this year. He loses out to that carrot-eating piece of crap from "A Good Day to Die Hard," but it was a pretty close match. He comes across like Peter Stormare after being flushed down into a Tijuana sewer and coming back with a brain injury and even more indecipherable accent. He's one of those special characters that, while you're watching him, you're actively trying to understand why nobody is shooting him in the face. The character is that bad. And Mollà is so unwatchable that he makes professional wrestler Dave Bautista look like a pretty damn good actor in comparison. Allow your mind to process that.

Also in the merc group is Katee Sackoff, so that's a thing I guess. She's basically playing Fem-Starbuck again since that's a thing that she does since she's Katee Sackoff. She's fine, but it's really one of those 'neither here nor there' things. It doesn't matter that much, and it could have been anyone. And as far as tough blondes in this series goes, I assure you that she is no Radha Mitchell.

Oh, and the best part about her is how she's evidently a lesbian, and is forward enough about it to get in people's faces over it, but she ends up being Riddick's love interest at the end because he promised to RAPE HER at one point and then kills a bunch of people which evidently is a move that gets her all kinds of hot and bothered and ready for some heterosexual lovin'. Because that's how human beings work, right? And I'll bet you if we saw an interview with Katee she'd call her character "strong." Because all actresses playing horribly offensive characters say that in an effort to defend it.

I don't mean to go on a feminist rant, but what the actual hell?

At the end of the film, a whole bunch of monsters come out of freaking nowhere to kill off the rest of the chumps who Riddick hasn't gotten around to yet, and the movie becomes something between a remake of "Pitch Black" and any other movie that features a lot of aliens crawling out of walls and burly guys shooting shotguns into the darkness going "AAAARGH." It's not that it's particularly bad, in fact it's just average at worst, but the fact that it only takes up the last half hour or so makes it feel particularly rushed and frankly out of place.

I suppose there are some redeeming qualities. There are some stunning visuals if you can get past the comic book looking, CGI-heavy style. The gore is actually pretty effective and the right level of gratuitous (an especially nice change after the PG-13 of "The Chronicles of Riddick"). And there are plenty of moments that strike the pitch perfect note of enjoyable cheese, particularly with the dialogue. When lines like "Instead of Furya, we wound up someplace called 'not-Furya'" are being said with stone-faced seriousness by Vin Diesel in his earth-quaking baritone, it's hard to not find a bit of fun in it. And as silly as it sounds and admittedly is, Riddick gets a dog. Yup, that's a thing that happens.

"Well, I'd certainly say she had marvelous judgment, Richard, if not particularly good taste."

Those positive qualities being said, I can't really give much more than a slightly below average review for "Riddick." It's not that the fact that it's a B Movie is bad. But you can make a good B Movie (see "The Thing" or "Escape From L.A.") and you can make one that's not so good. "Riddick" just didn't have a good enough script or good enough characters to balance out the B factor. And it's especially noticeable when the first film in the series has already shown us how good a genre film starring this character can be.

Man, this trailer makes "Riddick" look so much better than it was...

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Riddick" has some entertainment value, but despite being the return to an R-rated creature feature (by the end), the story feels very insignificant, the characters are nearly all grating, and so much time is spent with them that by the time the monsters heralding the main event show up, it seems out of place and unwelcome. It's not technically a terrible movie, but it feels superfluous when you could just be watching "Pitch Black" instead.

The World's End (2013)

Being a huge fan of Edgar Wright's work, going so far as to call "Shawn of the Dead" one of my favorite comedies ever, it goes without saying that "The World's End" was up very high on my list of Most Anticipated films of 2013. Like I do with most movies that I'm really looking forward to, I purposefully kept myself somewhat in the dark about it, going so far as to not even watch the trailer for it. And for some reason it didn't play in front of any film I've seen this year. So I went into "The World's End" with basically a clean slate, only expecting quality based on past experience and the cast.

Thankfully what I ended up getting was, as expected, a very well made film that was exciting, stylish, mysterious, funny and surprisingly heartfelt all at once. And while this was only to be expected since that list of attributes could be slapped on the box of every movie Edgar Wright ever made, it still is worth repeating because it just goes to show how impressive of a filmmaker this guy is. I'll say this right now: There are few directors out there whose works are more consistently entertaining than Edgar Wright. When this guy makes a movie, it's to your benefit to pay attention.

"The World's End" follows the adventures of five friends from school who once had a legendary night of pub crawling in their younger days. Twenty years later the de facto leader of the group, Gary (Simon Pegg), who is now a high functioning alcoholic, attempts to get the group back together to relive that night, which in his mind was the greatest moment of his frankly pathetic life. The rest of the group aren't really into it, having moved on and realized that Gary is a titanic schmuck some time ago, but eventually they all cave in and agree.

Oh yeah. Who wouldn't follow this guy?

Past that point is gets a little weird. Once the pub crawl begins, it becomes clear the town and people in it are a bit different since they were last living there. At first they chalk up to them being older, but pretty soon it starts going an "Invasion of the Bodies Snatchers" route, and things get officially, as the English would put it, cocked up. This leads to an escalation of sci-fi craziness that would seem bizarrely out of place had it not been written in such an effective and exciting manner.

The cast is pitch-perfect and made up of some of the funniest people I can think of. Of course Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are two of my Funniest People In The World in No Particular Order, but Martin Freeman does his best revival of his turn as Watson in "Sherlock" to play the uppity one to hysterical effect as well. What's amazing about Simon Pegg though is how much of a pathetic scumbag he's playing in this, but still manages to be somewhat charming and loveable, and you actually want to see him succeed. I suppose that's just called "acting talent."

The script, penned by Pegg and Wright, is full of the usual rapid fire, too-smart-for-most-American-audiences cleverness that is predominant throughout the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy of this, "Shawn of The Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," but whereas those films hit the ground running at a thousand miles an hour, "The World's End" takes it's time and is a bit slower paced with both story and jokes. The laughs aren't as densely packed as the other films, which gives it a sense of maturity the others lacked but at tradeoff of not being as memorable or endlessly quotable. That's not to say it isn't funny, which it very much is, but it's not nearly as goofy as the rest of the trilogy.

"Reservoir Dogs" would have been far less tragic (and more drunk) if it had been these guys. About the same amount of profanity, though.

All of Edgar Wright's films have recurring themes, among the most common of them being growing up, whatever that means. And finding out what becoming "an adult" is all about and what it means to each individual person is at the forefront of the story of "The World's End." Ultimately it's about Gary making amends for his past transgressions (kind of) and coming to terms with himself and realizing what it takes for him to be happy while embracing his faults. And ultimately he saves the world by doing so (kind of). And thanks in no small part to some surprisingly powerhouse acting on the parts of both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, it winds up being a rather moving story.

While it may not reach the levels of side-splitting hilarity as the rest of Edgar Wright's filmography, "The World's End" is a worthy final entry in the Wright/Pegg trilogy. It's always nice to know that no matter how many wretched, unfunny comedies are spewed out en masse from Hollywood, there's at least a few people left who still get it. You just have to go to England to find them.

Check out the trailer. I chose the one that DIDN'T give too much away.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The World's End" is a delightful romp of drunkenness that is charming in the way that only Edgar Wright and his cast of regulars can manage to be. Despite being more leisurely in pace than "Shawn of The Dead" or "Hot Fuzz," it's the most touching and visually impressive entry in the series. And while it's not as jammed to the brim with gags both overt and subtle as the others, it's still very, very funny. You gotta check this one out.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

"Cloud Atlas" has to be one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Now, whether is amazing in a good way or amazing in an unholy train-wreck way I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it's a helping of both. It's probably entirely dependent on whom you're talking to, because it's very clear that this is a film that possesses little room for middle ground. You're either going to be blown away by the hulking scale of it all, or there is going to be a remote control imbedded in the drywall after being hurled across the room in frustration.

Describing the story of "Cloud Atlas" is a rather ambitious exercise in futility, because the structure is very unconventional. Stretching across hundreds of years, the film follows several different stories, all containing different characters and settings, but keeping familiar themes throughout. The cast is also recycled in each story, as each actor plays about half a dozen roles, often under heavy makeup and routinely changing both ethnicity and gender. This coincidentally leads to the majority of the numerous WTF moments of "Cloud Atlas," which kind of make the whole thing worth it by themselves.

Not to mention how jaw-droppingly beautiful this movie is.

The reason for the actors playing multiple roles is because what the film is following is not specifically the characters of any one time, but their souls as they are reincarnated over and over again. Each soul gets their own timeline to shine, so to speak, but because of the pervasive presence of all the other souls in each story and the fact that the narrative jumps back and forth so rapidly, it doesn't ever feel like there's a singular main character. In a strange way it's almost as if the title character were time itself. And that's seriously the best I can do in describing the story. Anything deeper would involve a couple hundred pages and a whole lot of talking about themes and symbolism. And that's kind of boring.

 

Explosions however, are not.

What is interesting is that while each individual story would probably be considered cliched by itself, the way that it is presented in combination with all the other stories makes it unique enough to be interesting. And since we only spend about a minute at a time with each story until we switch again, there's not really enough time to get bored with the particular cliches that inhabit it.

Adding to the entertainment factor is the game of Where's Waldo that you constantly play while watching "Cloud Atlas," where you do your best to spot the actors under the pounds of makeup they wear. Not only is it fun to recognize Tom Hanks looking like Brad Dourif in "Deadwood" or Hugh Grant underneath the face paint of an Uruk-Hai looking cannibal, which is surreal in of itself, but you also get truly insane stuff like Hugo Weaving showing up looking like Ms. Doubtfire crossed with Nurse Ratchet. And Susan Sarandon looking like Sigmund Freud. And Halle Berry looking like Ming the Merciless. You can't help but laugh and marvel at the horrifyingly entertaining madness of it all.

When Hugh Grant showed up looking like Asian Penn Jillette, part of my life felt complete.

You know, it's entirely possible that this whole thing is simply a pretentious disaster which is so engorged on its own scope that it gives off the illusion of being important and cerebral when it's really just a slideshow of random scenes thrown in a blender and put together without context, and any kind of deeper meaning is completely dependent on either arbitrary visual callbacks, or what the viewer puts in themselves. That is certainly a possibility.

But you know what? It worked on me. I was thoroughly captivated throughout the entire thing, and with a towering run-time of nearly 3 hours, that's saying a lot. It's probably the most pretentious film I've ever really liked, but I thought it was well-made enough to warrant that bit of nose-in-the-air ridiculousness. At least it wasn't boring. There's a lot of things that "Cloud Atlas" can be accused of being, like confusing, overly long and full of itself, but boring is not one of them.

This is a rather accurate trailer for what the movie is like. If this looks interesting, you might dig it.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I must admit to being totally shocked by how much I liked "Cloud Atlas," because I was not expecting to at all. I'm guessing about half of most people won't. It's really long, it's really weird, it goes all over the place, and it's very easy to get lost inside the labyrinthine jumble of stories within. But damn it, it's well made and it's entertaining as crap. This is a movie everyone should see at least once. If you're going to hate it, you'll know really quick. Otherwise hang on and prepare yourself for some craziness. This would have landed in the lower half of my Top 10 of 2012 had I seen it last year.

The Innkeepers (2011)

I really enjoyed "House of The Devil," at least by the end when I realized that something was indeed going to happen at some point. While that film had a slow start it certainly paid off in the end with some really insane stuff which made the slightly dull sit totally worth it. And it also had a very stylish feel of a director who knows exactly what he's doing. So I suppose that puts director Ti West on my People to Watch list.

In "The Innkeepers," West keeps the pace much the same as in "House of The Devil," meaning that if you're not a fan of very, very, VERY slow and uneventful lead-ins, this is probably not the best film to recommend to you. I must admit to being slightly put off by the glacial pace of it, although to both the film's and Ti West's credit, it was never boring since West is very good at creating tension out of very little. Whether it's done with strange noises or subtle tricks with the camera or playing with the expectations we have come to have after seeing so many horror films, "The Innkeepers" keeps a pace which is surprisingly compelling despite the fact that nothing much is actually happening.

*Beer can opens*

"Yep."

"Mmm yep."

"Mmm hmm."

The story revolves around Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), two twenty-somethings who work in an old hotel which is on its last days open as it goes out of business. Being an old hotel in a horror movie, naturally terrible things involving death have occurred there, and the place is haunted. And since they are amateur ghost hunters, in-between sitting at the front desk being bored, Claire and Luke take it upon themselves to try and record events going on in the hotel before the place is turned into a parking lot.

So that's what they do for most of the film. One of them sits at the front desk and is bored until they hear something creepy and pick up a mic and go off looking for it. Every once in a while we get a scene where they're talking to a really bitchy lady and her kid who are staying in the hotel or with Leanne (Kelly McGillis), a psychic who is also staying there, but for the most part "The Innkeepers" is made up of slowly creeping around looking for whatever is making noises.

That's not to say I thought it was boring, although I can easily see someone being bored stiff by it. I thought it was actually very engaging and on occasion brutally suspenseful. The issue I have with it comes when you consider the fact that in the end, the ghosts really don't do anything. By the climax it's gone into full blown horror movie land, but when you get to the end and you tally up the body count, nothing that the ghosts did actually killed anyone.

 "Oh man. Is your side of the bed as lumpy as mine? This is insane, I'm gonna talk to someone."

I won't get into spoilers, but the big death of the movie is caused by a locked door and a medical condition. True, there was a ghost present at the time of death, but from what I could tell, the only thing it did was slowly walk forward. It's similar to my issue with "The Woman In Black," although at least in that movie the ghost did directly cause deaths. It's always been an annoyance with me when all a ghost does is stand there or suddenly appear and scream at you like it has nothing better to do with its time. Like, if it were a person instead of a ghost and that's all they did, there's no way you'd be scared of them. They'd just be a jackass. And "The Innkeepers" does a have a nasty habit of trying to scare us with the ghosts doing such insidious things as PLAYING A PIANO! The horror!

The best aspect of the film is the acting, because it's across-the-board fantastic. I really, really, really liked Sara Paxton as Claire in this movie. She is absolutely adorable in her quirky weirdness, coming across like one of those people who is kind of naturally uncomfortable in their own skin, and as someone who has known many people like that, and in fact has been one of those people myself, I could easily relate to her. And I really didn't want to see bad things happen to her, which only made the movie more intense when bad things inevitably did happen.

And THAT, film makers, is why it's more effective to NOT liter your horror films with douchebags.

Pat Healy as Luke was a lot of fun as well, being one of those guys who likes to talk big and be snarky and cool, but it's clear that he's just as awkward as Claire. It's a really nice subtle acting job. And even Kelly McGillis was quite good, redeeming herself somewhat for her performance in "Top Gun" all those years ago. Although I must admit that she does look a lot like Dame Judi Dench now. It's weird.

I'm not going to lie and say that I really enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed aspects of it, for sure, but at the end of the day when the credits rolled I was left rather lukewarm. The climax, as intense as it admittedly got, just wasn't enough to make the slow burn of the rest of the film worth it. Ti West did it far better in "House of The Devil," which ended with an Earth-shattering kaboom whereas "The Innkeepers" just goes out with a decently large firework.

Check out the trailer unless you want some of the bigger jumps to be a surprise.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Innkeepers" is a very well-shot film with fantastic performances across the board. It's spooky, it's very intense at parts, and puts you on edge for nearly the entire film. However, it is somewhat of a let-down in the end due to a vague and unsatisfying ending which does not live up to the tension the rest of the film provided. It's well made but disappointing. I'd recommend "House of The Devil" over this one.

Léon: The Professional (1994)

Jean Reno is one of my favorite actors. I love when he's playing a tough guy, because he keeps it so low key that you're never quite sure of how much he's capable of, giving his characters an air of mystery and coolness about them. When he does finally break out the pain, it's almost like a surprise. A wonderful surprise with a sexy voice.

Gary Oldman is another one of my favorite actors. I particularly love when he's playing villains, which he has done on numerous occasions to legendary effect ("Dracula," "Air Force One," "The Fifth Element" anyone?). This is especially true when he goes over-the-top with it. Anything to make me sit back and say "Holy crap this guy is freaking crazy," which Oldman is very good at.

In "Léon: The Professional," Jean Reno plays a hitman and Gary Oldman plays a drugged-out maniac who kills people while ranting about Beethoven. I think it's obvious what my opinion on this movie is predetermined to be.

Widely considered director Luc Besson's masterpiece, "The Professional" is the story of Léon (Jean Reno), an assassin who finds that he does indeed possess a soul after saving a life for a change. When a family in the apartment next to him gets slaughtered by corrupt DEA officers, Léon takes in 11 year old Mathilda (Natalie Portman in her debut performance), the only survivor who was lucky enough to not be in the apartment at the time. Seeking revenge, Mathilda asks Léon to teach her how to be an assassin as well, which is something Léon reluctantly agrees to do on the basis of "She's going to try anyway, so better to teach her so that she won't die."

A hitman and a young girl walking down the street as she carries his plant, who is also his best friend. This movie is so French.

"The Professional" isn't just about gearing a kid up for violence, however. There's a real emotional core to this movie which is either extremely sweet or extremely disturbing. I can't quite tell which is more accurate. It's probably a helping of both. Léon and Mathilda make a great pairing as he becomes a father figure to her, giving her the support and affection that she never had before. Because of that he discovers what has been missing from his life, while giving her a new lease on her own. In the end this is a movie about two people saving each other, as she rescues him as much as he rescued her.

But on the other hand, their relationship from the beginning is based on killing people. So there's that weirdness that was mentioned previously. Much like "True Romance" or "Natural Born Killers" or even "Kick-Ass," it's always a freaky thing when you consider the nature of the relationships some characters have, to the point where it's difficult to tell whether or not we should be happy for them or even hoping that they succeed. Is it okay for characters to kill if the story is told from the perspective of the people doing the killing? Does the fact that we root for the main characters by default excuse anything they do? I find that to be a very interesting discussion.

 That's just wholesome right there.

Jean Reno is of course great, but Natalie Portman has to give one of the absolute best first-time performances ever captured on film here. Some of her lines may be a little hammy (not her fault), but I defy anyone to watch the scene when she walks past the bodies of her family to go to Léon's apartment and pleads with him to let her in and tell me that it's not gut-wrenching. I suppose it should be no surprise that she was great considering that years later she was able to maintain her dignity after being forced to say lines like "Anakin, you're breaking my heart." That's talent.

Although Léon and Mathilda are great, the guy who steals the show is the villain, Stansfield (Gary Oldman). This guy is a miracle, I swear. This is probably the scariest villain Oldman's ever played, and he's so unhinged and drugged out of his mind that there is absolutely no telling what he's going to do. He's one of the those characters who would never in a thousand years hold any kind of position of authority given the fact that he's clearly a psychotic butcher, but it doesn't matter because he's amazing while he's doing it. He's got many great moments, but the scene where he corners Mathilda in a bathroom and pulls out a gun, asking her if she enjoys life because he takes no pleasure in killing somebody if they don't, is one of the most chilling things I've ever seen.

Of course, most will remember the shouting.

"The Professional" also has a good amount of action in it, although it's not as much as you'd probably expect. After starting with a bang, the middle is more reserved for character development and slow building tension, with the final act making up for it as many bullets fly and many things blow up as a veritable army of SWAT team members descend on Léon and Mathilda in an ending which is the very definition of bittersweet.

There's not many negative things I can say about "The Professional." It's a really solid movie. I think the biggest issue is the awkwardness a person is almost certainly going to feel whenever Mathilda is hitting on Léon, which is understandable. Besides that issue (which isn't even really an issue), the only thing I can find to complain about is the length of time a grenade takes to blow up. When that's the worst thing you can come up with to nitpick, that's pretty damn good.

Okay, okay. I know this trailer sucks, but you do get a little bit of Gary Oldman awesomeness in it.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Professional" is a fantastic, stylish, very French action movie that showcases some powerhouse acting talent. The action is great, the tension is pins and needles, and the characters are impossible to not love. But all that aside, honestly it's worth a watch for Gary Oldman alone. Great flick.

Shaun of The Dead (2004)

Despite the fact that I am of the opinion that zombies are played out and are officially boring at this point, in an ironic twist one of my favorite comedies remains to this day "Shaun of The Dead," a film that is so genius it manages to make me laugh my fool head off in spite of the zombies within it. It's one of those wonderful movies that gets better the more you watch it, since the jokes contained within are so dense and fast-paced that it's probably close to impossible to catch everything the first, second, or even third time you see it. That combined with the fact that it contains two of my "Three Funniest People in The World in No Particular Order" makes "Shaun of The Dead" a film that I'm always okay with busting out.

The film follows a couple of days in the life of Shaun (Simon Pegg), a 30-something who is a bit of a slacker without much direction in life. After he gets dumped by his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), he gets very drunk and then decides to get his life sorted out the next day. Unfortunately for Shaun, the next day is when the zombie apocalypse happens.

Who knew, right?

Shaun and his flatmate Ed (Nick Frost) head out to safety, deciding that the best place to go is the Winchester, the pub they are regulars at. On the way there they pick up Liz and her two flatmates, along with Shaun's mother and step-father. Together do their best to survive the onslaught of zombies, as well as their leader Shaun who, despite the best of intentions, has a habit of mucking things up. To be sure, the whole "Go to the Winchester" idea turns out to not be a very good one. This all leads to a finale which gets surprisingly grim given the light, fun-filled tone of the rest of the film, although at the end of the day "Shaun of The Dead" still ends on a relatively happy note. (And song.)

While both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are comedic geniuses, that wouldn't have mattered much had they not had a great script to work with as well, which they fortunately do. "Shaun of The Dead" is written as tight as a drum, with barely a word wasted or not made to return later as a gag. This includes entire sequences both physical and verbal repeating themselves in different context. Things like a passing exchange during a video game session coming back verbatim during a last stand at the bar makes for extremely rewarding re-watching when you catch it. The iconic "walking to the store" shot playing out twice in extremely different but yet oddly identical ways is probably the best example of that.

And if you notice, he does switch it to a Diet Coke. I love those little touches.

Most likely surprising to most people is that aside from being very funny, "Shaun of The Dead" functions quite well as a straight-up zombie film. All the tropes and standard elements of the genre are present, which makes sense considering its parodic nature, but what's interesting is that were you to take all the humor away the film is actually a far better zombie movie than most legitimate zombie movies manage to be. And I'm not talking a little bit here. I'm talking light years ahead of anything a maestro like Romaro has done in decades.

Perhaps the reason it works is because of the fact that, since it's a comedy, the stone-faced seriousness of the genre along with its fatalism and commentary on human nature is absent. To me, that garbage usually makes zombie films a boring sit, and I have a difficult time caring about any of the characters because generally speaking, in a zombie movie most every human is a terrible person. And if they aren't, by the end it's usually a good bet that they'll have lost most of the humanity they had. Since you know, these movies are very diverse in their plots.

Since "Shaun of The Dead" is free from that crap, and it's okay to actually like the characters since it's a comedy, when bad things happen to them it actually has the shocking side effect of being sad, which the movie plays up to a heartrending degree on occasion. You don't want to see these people get killed (Well, maybe David), which is such an alien reaction for me to have in a zombie movie that it's hard for me to comprehend. Even Ed, the most obnoxious, dense, and insufferable member of the group is a fantastic character who usually ends up being everybody's favorite despite him being a total chump. In fact he's front and center of the second most emotionally charged and tearful scene of the film. And how many zombie movies can you remember which had a death scene you even felt like considering entertaining the notion of crying at in the first place? And that's for the "loser" of the movie.

Damn it, Ed. That was an original pressing.

I would also feel remiss to not mention that the acting in "Shaun of The Dead" is unexpectedly fantastic. And I'm not just talking comedic acting here, although this film is a master's class in the very finest of British humor. While every single actor here is hysterical, even the deathly serious Bill Nighy (I freaking love that guy), there are scenes of such emotional depth, particularly from Simon Pegg, that on occasion it is easy to forget that you're watching a zombie spoof.

You know, it's a difficult thing explaining why you like a certain comedy. Humor is always troublesome to quantify without sounding redundant, so I'll just leave my comments regarding the comedic aspects at "This is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen." It speaks completely to my particular tastes in comedy. Whether or not it will for anyone else is completely dependent on that individual. But seriously, I have a hard time believing anyone could watch this movie and not love it. Unless of course they're deathly offended by zombie gore and gratuitous f-bombs.

I should probably stop there. The more I think about "Shaun of The Dead," the more I want to write. And I don't really want to write a novel here. Just freaking watch it. If you've already seen it, see it again. It gets better each time. If you're like me and have already seen it like a dozen times, well hell. Let's give it another go. You grab the hog lumps and I'll grab the pints. (Might be a bit warm. Cooler's off.)

I'm actually not a huge fan of this trailer, but it's decent I guess. At least it's not made to look like a dumbass American comedy like the American trailer made it out to be.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Shaun of The Dead" makes my short list not only for favorite comedies, but it's also probably one of my favorite films, period. Like "The Big Lewbowski," it's an infinitely quotable and re-watchable film that somehow, impossibly still manages to get better every time.